Pure thought experiments, on behalf of a modern philosopher, gadfly, empiricist, who happens to be very charming and good looking.
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Monday, November 21, 2011

Random Thoughts on the History of Things

Say I go to sleep in tip Florida in the year 1000 and my body is moved by ideas and technology to Seattle in the current year of 2011. When I wake and try to describe my current surrounding. When I assess my current situation how important is the history of what happened to me while I was asleep? How important were the ideas that came and went, the philosophy that reigned and then fell out of favor, the political movements that transpired. How important is the history?

I am conflicted on the answers that swirl in my head. Part of me says that history is important since it provided the context for how I am where I am. It shows me by contrasting my previous experience by my current experience. It says these things are different it is no longer warm, this rain is freezing etc. Context that it designs for me also clouds my ability to see it shadows it through assumptions.

Now if I was born in Seattle had nothing to do with Florida does the fact of that transition of ideas occurred to others make any difference to me?

Do we really repeat history if we don’t learn from it? Or does history repeat because we have human qualities like greed, need for validation, desire, anger, manipulation, guilt and with a finite set of emotions and command for understanding them we enter a cosmic form of pinball that collides these reactions in such a way that wars will happen, travesties will happen, people will steal, etc? Then the says is not history shows us but human nature teaches us.

Surely I can learn to build a plane and learn how to fly it without the need to trace the history of aviation back to the Wright Brothers or the drawings of Davinci. Surely I can answer the philosophical questions of why fly? Is it right to fly? Or how can one fly better without this history.

Why then is history so important? It is important to know your history. It is important to know where you come from? In previous life times it was important to know your linage since your medical history was attributed more towards guess work of your relatives fates then towards scientific certainty. But knowing you position where you come from could also hurt you couldn’t it? An invisible shackle that links you to some past event that has no basis on the present but inevitably shapes it. At this moment I am struggling to find a reason why history is so so crucial and not seen as a hindrance I am sure it will come to me just not today and I am not sure why.